The Trumpeteer

The Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven

OUR LADY ASSUMED INTO HEAVEN

CONSOLER OF THE AFFLICTED

The World at present is terrifying, mad, and bad. Over 900 hundred people have been killed in clashes between the military and the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt, and over 3,000 have been wounded. The Christians who are being systematically and ferociously persecuted in Muslim lands are suffering in Egypt as well. Egypt, this most ancient of countries, which is by nature sophisticated and tolerant is being reduced to a state of chaos, by whom it is hard to know. The question as to why the supposedly Christian president of the United States Barak Obama seems utterly disinterested resides in the fact that it would appear that children are being encouraged to pray to him, nay worship him, and he appears to be nothing to stop this idolatry among children and the young, which is redolent of Nazi Germany and the Hitler Youth. This would be bad enough, but when Obama then has the gall to say that Putin is like Stalin and Hitler, because he is anti Gay demonstrations being held during the Winter Olympics, one knows that he has missed the point. Hitler was very puritanical as was the whole Soviet Empire of Joseph Stalin. Neither of these tyrants would have countenanced gay rights, or gay marriage. Those espousing either would have soon found themselves incarcerated either in concentration camp. However what Obama has failed to realize is that he, like Hitler and Stalin, wishes to be adored.

To add to this sad tale of insane hubris, a former U.S. Colonel of the U.S. Marine Corps said recently at a City Council meeting in Concord that he was very worried that the Department of Homeland Security were working with law enforcement to build a “domestic army”. The good Colonel was speaking at a meeting of Concord City Council, which met last Tuesday to discuss whether they should accept a grant of £260,000 from Homeland Security to buy a Bear Cat armoured vehicle. The City’s Police chief felt it was necessary to have such vehicle to deal with libertarians, (I presume this means those who are trying to defend the American Constitution, and civil.), sovereign citizen adherents, and Occupy Activists. The Colonel remarking on this peculiar request stated that he had never had such a vehicle when he was peace keeping in Fallujah in Iraq. Obviously Concord must be a very dangerous place!

The final interesting comment that gives pause for thought is that Oliver Stone, the well known American film director and Vietnam veteran remarked in Japan at recent Press Conference that “Obama is a snake... and we have to turn on him.” Why is Oliver Stone so incensed? It is because Obama is “institutionalizing” illegal National security Agency spy programmes. To finally descend from pathos to bathos, a Rodeo clown has been sacked for wearing an Obama mask!

In these different stories, we have a cameo of the World as it is now, and the world as it always was. It is the domain of Satan. Ever since, in a terrible rage, as he fell from Heaven taking a third of the angels with him, he has been fighting The Woman Clothed in the Sun, for it is she, a mere woman, who crushes him with her heel. Humility is, along with her purity, the most conspicuous virtue that adorns Mary’s Faith, Hope, and Charity. It is this humility that triumphs over the madness of sexual immorality, worshipping heads of states, be they presidents, tyrants, kings or Emperors, and the glorification of the kingdoms of this world, more or less tainted by Satan. It is this humility of Mary, that becomes a storm of glory and lifts her up to the heights of Heaven, where she reigns as Queen of Heaven, and Earth and the Universe.

Only today I was given a new perspective on the Assumption. I turned to that wonderful book, “The Mary Book” first published by Sheed and Ward in 1950. Looking up something on the Assumption I came upon an essay by the great Cyril Martindale S.J., which I am sure I have never read before, or if I did, I must have had a veil over my eyes. What I read was enthralling.

If I understood the great Jesuit correctly, what he was positing was the following.The entire human race is distracted, many by selfishness and sin, others by weakness, and with the great saints far less so, but original sin has clouded our reasoning, and it is only by pursuing holiness wholeheartedly that we begin to see things as they are.Now when we die, we see ourselves and our sins in their true light, and the shock is immense. The repentant will gladly accept the painful purification of purgatory, and the great saints will enter heaven in a cloud of glory, but all will realize how they have failed to love such a supremely loving God. The Damned will simply despair for their sins will prevent them from asking for mercy. One of the things that all will realize that they had with the grace of God, a great spiritual capacity for doing great good in all the most wonderful ways, be they great miracle workers like St. Martin de Porres, St. Vincent Ferrer, or Padre Pio, or simply such great saints of love like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Elizabeth of Hungary,St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal, or St. Vincent de Paul.

Now with Our Lady there was no regret. Astonished at God’s goodness, she will see that her response had been perfection itself, and so as she is lifted above the clouds by millions of angels, she thinks nothing of herself, but only of God’s infinite love, the burning and eternal love of the Trinity, and so as the entire Universe breaks into something like the most magnificent of Te Deum’s, Mary continues her great song of Praise “The Magnificat”, which then she bequeaths to the entire Church, and beyond to the whole of the human race, that by the golden staircase of humility, God raises his children to the glories of eternal bliss. It is Mary’s song of praise that will unleash more and more grace upon the World, so that finally her song will be the net that catches a myriad number of souls for Christ.

All the darkness and cruelty of man’s apparently limitless inventions of evil, Our Lady’s glorious triumphant Assumption dispels in some golden sky of wonder, joy and praise, and so let us pray for the poor American people, and for their deluded President. Let us pray for the souls of the poor people in Egypt cut down by hatred, and strife. Let us pray for the poor orphans throughout the world, whose mothers have been ripped from them by starvation, disease, and war, and let us pray that King of Kings, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and God will bring peace and bring the Jews to a knowledge of him as their Messiah and God. Finally let us pray for the Moslems who reverence Mary that they will finally accept that she is the Mother of God. Finally let us try and imitate Our Lady in humility and her total obedience to God’s will.